


Orbital Eccentricity

by st_aurafina



Category: Criminal Minds, Dollhouse
Genre: Crossover, F/M, Gift
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-10
Updated: 2010-01-10
Packaged: 2017-10-06 02:17:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/48623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/st_aurafina/pseuds/st_aurafina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spencer is an anomaly in the Bureau; he's well aware of others like him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Orbital Eccentricity

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2009 fandomstocking exchange

When you're an anomaly in the Bureau, you're well aware of others like you. For his own safety and sanity, Spencer Reid keeps track of all the freaks; the Dale Coopers, Fox Mulders and Rebecca Lockes. It's a general awareness, like a satellite tracking meteors. Spencer is constantly vigilant for a free-wheeling body departing a formerly predictable path and spinning into his life. He is not startled when Paul Ballard – previously steady and quietly ambitious – goes off the rails. Spencer merely adds the agent to his tracking list and keeps himself out of the way, observing as Ballard tears his career to pieces.

Spencer keeps himself out of Ballard's path of destruction, but facts find their way into his mind anyway. He notes a reference to Rossum in Clinical Neuropharmacology, and another in a senate bill on bioelectric interface patents. A long-running thread on an abduction forum about corporate slavery suddenly goes down when one poster mentions Rossum in the context of mind-control. Then there's an incident with a psychotropic drug on a college campus in Los Angeles, and Rossum's name comes up again. While analysing footage from the lab, Spencer catches sight of the abduction victim Ballard was seeking - Caroline. He remembers her face; Ballard bore her image before him like a pennant as he tilted at Rossum, the Bureau, and in the end, anyone standing in the way of his quest. On the screen, it's clear there is something not right about Caroline – something hypnagogic in her eye-movement, maybe? Spencer has to slow the footage down to catch it, and when he does, the information he didn't know he was gathering reaches critical mass and crystallises. There is something very bad going on inside Rossum.

By then, of course, Paul Ballard is long gone from the Bureau. Rather than use the phone, Spencer waits until the next time the BAU is working a case in the LA area. He worries, as he slips quietly away from the team, that he is finally slipping into the neurotic behaviour that marks the freaks in the FBI. Then he thinks about Caroline: her carefully constructed body language and the almost imperceptible slow-wave movement of her eyes. There's a very fine line between caution and paranoia, and Ballard crossed it months ago. Spencer will be more careful.

Spencer doesn't know what to expect as he walks down the corridor towards Ballard's door - spy cameras hidden in the plaster moldings, Russian mobsters loitering in the shadows, mind-controlled assassins leaping down from the ceiling? He certainly didn't expect a pretty girl in a floral apron standing in the doorway opposite Ballard's apartment, holding a tray of cookies with padded oven mitts.

"Oh!" Her mouth makes a perfect circle as she looks at him in surprise. "Are you from the FBI?"

Spencer looks at her curiously. Her affect is very strange - guileless and watchful at the same time. He reaches for his ID, and notes the way the girl's eyes follow his hand. "I'm SSA Reid, I'm – that is, I worked with Agent Ballard." He watches her gaze carefully, looking for anomalous eye-movement. It's difficult to spot in real-time, but it's there. This girl is under some kind of hypnagogic influence, just like Caroline.

"Don't listen to him, Mellie. We never actually worked a case together. Spencer Reid is notorious - he's even more of a flake than me." Paul Ballard stands in his own doorway, lean and shirtless, eyes hollow and skin pale.

"You shouldn't put yourself down all the time, Paul." The girl – Mellie – smiles at Ballard, and Spencer is disturbed at the way her face lights up. Suddenly she is animated and adoring, and it is nauseating because Spencer knows it is artificial. He swallows – the smell of sugar and nutmeg is overwhelming in the narrow hallway. The cookies must be very hot.

"What do you want, Reid?" Ballard may have burned out his career, but his game-face is still intact.

Spencer tries to find a way to warn Ballard that Mellie is under Rossum control, but when he looks closely at the taut lines of Ballard's face - the shadows under his eyes and the crease of worry between his brows - it's clear that Ballard already knows. There's something electric in the air, a current travelling between Ballard and Mellie. It's a dangerous force, and Spencer does not want to be caught in it. He swallows again and spreads his hands. "I just wanted to say I was sorry." Sorry that nobody believed you. Sorry that I can't give you any help. Sorry that you wouldn't take it anyway.

Ballard shakes his head. "Don't worry about it. It's nothing." They're both covering for each other now, just like in Morgan's stories about working undercover. Spencer's palm is damp as they shake hands. He adjusts his bag on his shoulder and heads for the elevator, aware of Mellie's gaze tracking him all the way down the hall. He doesn't look back, though. He doesn't want to find out what happens to the people who deviate from their predicted paths in this game. He's glad he's not that kind of agent.


End file.
